Schonbrunn Palace

 On Wednesday we went Full Imperial Court. As in, we visited the Schonbrunn Palace complex, which was the summer residence of Austria's nobility during the height of Hapsburg power and prestige in Europe. So it's quite the place.  The palace itself is Austria's most visited historical site, so tours have a timed entry, so we got our ticket and then wandered around the grounds until we could go in. The grounds are quite large and host a number of sites and activities, and we hit up a lot of them.

In the courtyard of the Schonbrunn Palace

The park gardens were lovely, and the large greenhouse was beautiful!

It was like walking into a rainforest inside. On conservatories I've been to have been more like plants on display, but this one the plants were just... being plants in all their glory.

Nifty glass architecture.

 One of the attractions was the Austrian Zoo, which is apparently one of the best in Europe. And it was indeed a very nice zoo! The layout had some holdovers from the days of private menageries, but the enclosures were very well done. Since we were there in the later afternoon, we also happened to hit feeding time for most of the animals, which was neat because it meant that even some of the shy ones were out in their pens munching away. We also caught a glimpse of a sea lion show (it was very popular and I could only kind of see over people's heads)... I knew sea lions were big, but at one point the male sea lion got up and gave the handler a hug and oh goodness gracious did it dwarf the very large human male. So that was impressive. They also had a very cool rainforest exhibit, that included a rambunctious pile of baby otters and a walk in cave filled with bats. I thought that part was pretty cool, because it was the done the same way that lots of other zoos do the walk in enclosures with birds, but instead you had bats flying around. It was also along a one way route through the rainforest, so I guess if you were afraid of bats or the dark you'd have to face your fears. I've never seen an exhibit like that, and thought it was really neat.

Communing with the creatures.

Elephants eat a lot.

 The tour of the grand palace was also really neat. There were no pictures allowed, unfortunately, because many of the rooms were indeed Splendid, with a capital S. We had an audio guided tour as part of our Vienna Pass, which was pretty neat as it guided you through each room and gave you a little bit of extra information. It was pretty clear that they were trying to move people through the palace just to handle the crowds, and it was actually fairly effective. None of the rooms were too crowded and you could get good look around. I wish that the audio tour had been a little more detailed, since many of the rooms were incredibly detailed, and the recordings mostly focused on the historical figures rather than the rooms themselves. But there were a couple of rooms that made it totally worth it. One was a completely temperature and humidity controlled room, in which they had all us tours walk through in an enclosed glass tunnel, in order to preserve the original 300 something year old wall hangings and bed in Empress Maria-Theresea's official bedchamber, which was more for ceremonial christenings and whatnot than actual sleeping. The bed was impressive - gold embroidered pillars and canopy, rich fabrics, and lots of opulence. There was another room that was entirely inlaid walnut and gilding, with parchment pieces from Ancient India framed into the walls. The recordings kind of skimmed over the obvious colonial implications of that (and another room filled with pen drawing of chinese-inspired day-in-the-life scenes), but again, the preservation and detail was impressive. Overall the visit was worth braving the other tourists.

We capped off the day by meeting Michael's grad school friend, Nick, who is also here for the conference, for dinner at a very tasty traditional austrian restaurant, and then going to a Mozart and Strauss concert. Yep, culture! It was a kind of funny affair, but quite lovely. It was clearly aimed at all us tourists in Vienna who think, "my, I am in the center of the classical music universe, I should listen to some live classical music but I don't know anything about it". So basically, us in a nutshell. It was held again on the grounds of the Schonbrunn, in a venue called the Orangerie that has been hosting live concerts since the era of Mozart and Strauss and all the other composers who lived here, which I thought was cool. The first half was all Mozart, and the second half featured Strauss, and was a mix of their symphony pieces, operas, and ballets. The opera singers were impressive, as basically all opera singers are, and the ballet dancers were a little limited by their stage size. All in all, though, it was a very beautiful, and live music always has that little extra something that makes it special.

Getting our culture on at the Orangerie in Schonbrunn Palace. Other than the projector lighting, it was a fairly authentic experience.

Michael's grad school friend Nick joined us, too.

The program was a mix of typical symphony pieces, opera and some ballet. It was definitely a smorgasbord of "classical music for the uncultured people who come to Vienna and want to say they saw a Mozart concert", but that's kind of what we needed.

 Thursday (today) is Michael's conference presentation, so he's actually attending the conference this afternoon, and I'm planning on catching up on some work emails and getting a little bit done while sitting in a river front cafe, so it's unlikely we'll have too many pictures, but I'm looking forward to some low-key enjoyment of this city.